Outsider in the White House by Bernie SandersNotable passages from
Outsider in the White House by Bernie Sanders

Verso, Brooklyn, 2015

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The interests of the privileged few

   Believe me. The problem with Washington, and politics in the United States, is not that ordinary people have too much power and influence. It's not that too much attention is being paid to low-income children. It's not that the needs of the rich and large corporations are ignored.
   The problem, for those who have just crawled out from under a rock, is that groups representing the wealthiest people in this country are able to decisively influence the legislative process so that public policy reflects the interests of the privileged few and not the needs of the general population. And if you don't understand this simple fact, you haven't a clue as to what politics in America is all about.


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Creating a progressive movement

   That's how you construct a movement, build a political presence: one step at a time, adding person to person until you have involved enough people to make a difference on the political landscape.

   Our booth is full staffed with volunteers—senior citizens and long-haired young people, veterans and peace activists, trade unionists and women's advocates—reflecting the diversity of our coalition. The heart of our campaign is in that booth….


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Profit-driven health care

   Increasingly, the function of the health care industry in this country is not to make sick people well, or to prevent disease, but to make huge profits for insurance and pharmaceutical companies and some well-paid professionals.

   Let's be clear. The debate over health care in this country is not a debate about medical treatment or the best way to prevent disease. It is a debate about economics and class politics. Either we maintain a profit-driven health care system whose main function is to enrich certain individuals and institutions, or we develop a nonprofit, cost-effective system that provides quality health care for all people as a right of citizenship.
   Health care reform in America will not come without radical political change and the growth of a strong progressive movement.


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Weakening democracy

   It is in the interest of those who have great wealth and immense corporate power to weaken democracy. The less power the people have, the fewer checks there are on those who already control the American economy and its resources. The greater the belief that participation in the political process doesn't really make a difference, the more likely it is that people will give up hope that we can ever attain a just society and a decent standard of living.
   Make no mistake about it: the wealthy and their political representative are working hard to keep people away from the voting booths. They have vigorously opposed legislation that would make it easier for people to vote. The have corrupted campaign financing, so that citizens have lost faith in the political process. They have turned negative campaigning into a high art, with the result that huge numbers of voters demonstrate their disgust with gutter politics by refusing to vote on election day. They have begun the process of dismantling social programs so that citizens increasingly feel that government cannot and will not do anything to meet their needs.


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Rebuilding America: Government has an role to play

   Let's face it, under heavy pressure from Republicans and conservative Democrats, the nation has not paid attention to the things government is supposed to do. No private company can safeguard the quality of our drinking water. No multinational corporation can provide us with decent roads and inexpensive mass transportation. No amount of charity will house all the homeless, feed all the hungry, or protect the personal safety of all Americans. The government has a very large role to play in making the world we inhabit livable and safe.
   Rebuilding our physical infrastructure means repairing our aging roads and bridges, cleaning up toxic waste dumps, constructing sewage treatment facilities, restoring our schools and libraries and equipping them with computers so that all Americans can enter the information age. It means building affordable housing so millions do not have to pay exorbitant rents to live with peeling lead paint and substandard plumbing in crime-infested areas. It means establishing fast, reasonably priced mass transportation in and between our cities.
   Rebuilding our social infrastructure is also necessary. It is high time we put more cops on the beat, had more trained teachers in the schools and more nurses in our health care clinics. High-quality and affordable day care should be available in every community. We need more inspectors to monitor the quality of our meat, the potential dangers of our pharmaceuticals, the safety of our airplanes. We require more affordable nursing homes for the elderly and job training for young men and women, together with retraining for workers who have lost their jobs.


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Our environment

   We must be vigilant about protecting our environment. Economically, it makes no sense to degrade our soil, air, and water in the interest of quick profits, only to spend billions ten years from now to remedy the mess we've made. The enormous cost of cleaning up existing toxic waste sites reveal that pollution is only cost-deferment.
   In health terms, environmental degradation makes us far sicker than we would otherwise be, and reduces the quality of everyday life. Effective health care begins with prevention, and preserving a liveable environment is one of the best medical investments we can make.
   It is not as if acting as careful stewards of our environment is inefficient, as corporations so often claim. Safeguarding the environment creates new industries, new jobs, and new opportunities for workers to make a decent living. And it ensures that future generations will not have to bear the cost—in money, in illness—of our folly.


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An audacious proposal

(From the Afterword by John Nichols)

   [I]n an extended interview with the Nation, Sanders … explained "I don't wake up every morning, as some people here in Washington do, and say, 'You know, I really have to be president of the United States. I was born to be president of the United States.' What I do wake up every morning feeling is that this country faces more serious problems than at any time since the Great Depression, and there is a horrendous lack of serious political discourse or ideas out there that can address these crises, and that somebody has got to represent the working-class and the middle-class of this country in standing up to the big-money interests who have so much power over the economic and political life of this country. So I am prepared to run for president of the Unites Sates."


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Building a coalition that can transform politics

(From the Afterword by John Nichols)

   Jettisoning the standard candidate line about what he or she would do, Sanders talked about what everyone would have to do to "bring together the kind of coalition that can win—that can transform politics. We've got to bring together trade unionist and working families, our minority communities, environmentalists, young people, the women's community, the gay community, seniors, veterans, the people who in fact are the vast majority of the American population. We've got to create a progressive agenda and rally people around that agenda."
   To do this , Sanders suggested, America did not need a political campaign. American needed "a political revolution."
   "When I talk about a political revolution, what I am referring to is the need to do more than just win the next election. It's about creating a situation where we are involving millions of people in the process who are not now involved, and changing the nature of media so they are talking about issues that reflect the needs and the pains that so many of our people are currently feeling," the senator said of his presidential run. " A campaign has got to be much more than just getting votes and getting elected. It has got to be helping to educate people, organize people. If we can do that, we can change the dynamic of politics for years and years to come. If 80 to 90 percent of the people in this country vote, if they know what the issues are (and make demands based on that knowledge), Washington and Congress will look very, very different from the Congress currently dominated by big money and dealing only with the issues that big money wants them to deal with."


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